Monday, November 12, 2012

The Case for Legalizing Marijuana

(Authors note: this essay will be published tomorrow in the Johns Hopkins Newsletter. Since it was written for publication, I had to omit many statistics and important sources which quantified the impact of the arguments I cite here. These stats will follow in a separate post.)

Earlier
this week, Colorado and Washington made international headlines by becoming the
first states to legalize marijuana for recreational use. These measures contradict
existing drug policy at the federal level, and many pundits anticipate a legal
showdown that goes all the way to the Supreme Court. But the short-term outcome
of these battles will do little to change the long-term necessity of ending the
war on drugs. Legalizing marijuana across all 50 states is long overdue, and whenever
it inevitably comes to pass it will make our nation richer, safer, and freer.

In
times of recession and massive debt, the fiscal savings and economic benefits
of legalization cannot be overlooked. State and federal governments spend tens
of billions of dollars every year to find, arrest, prosecute and imprison
non-violent drug offenders. Legalizing marijuana would decrease these costs
while simultaneously increasing tax revenues (both from taxing the sale of marijuana
itself and from the income taxes levied on the new industry). The cannabis industry
also has tremendous growth potential due to the plants’ many industrial uses. A
distinct variety of cannabis called hemp can be used to make dozens of everyday
products in a cheap, efficient, and environmentally friendly way. Cannabis itself
can be fermented to produce energy, and is already a useful biofuel with the
potential to reduce our dependence on oil. Finally, by removing artificial
restrictions on supply and enabling competition, legalizing marijuana would
bring the price of pot closer in line with the cost of production, increasing
economic efficiency in general.

Legalizing
marijuana would also make us safer, for at least three reasons. Firstly, it
would defund organized crime. Prohibition gives a monopoly to those willing to
break the law by shielding them from competition and taxation. This inflates
the price of pot and sends lucrative profits to gangs and cartels – including
the same Mexican drug cartels that have killed an estimated 60,000 people in
drug related violence since 2006. The profits from this underground empire are
used to fund activities far more sinister than hitting the bong; these cartels
are known to dabble in kidnapping, extortion, weapons smuggling, child sex
slavery, and hired assassination. Legalizing marijuana would divert money away
from these thugs by eliminating the underground demand for their most popular product.

Secondly,
legalization would make the marijuana trade itself safer by turning a violent black
market into a transparent and regulated one. Consumers would no longer need to
buy their weed from professional criminals, and bloody turf wars between rival
distributors would disappear as the demand for their services dried up. And not
only would the process of selling pot be safer, but the pot itself would be
safer; the street practice of lacing weed with more addictive drugs or filler
substances would be replaced by the quality controls and business
accountability of a regulated market.

Thirdly,
legalization would decrease crime by rebuilding America’s poorest and most desperate
communities. Imprisoning peaceful people for victimless crimes destroys families
and inhibits economic advancement, which in turn actually increases crime. When
poor fathers are thrown in jail or killed in an unnecessarily dangerous drug
world, their families become even more desperate and dysfunctional. Studies
show that children growing up in these broken households are more likely to demonstrate
aggressive behavior, to be delinquent, suspended or expelled from school, and to
turn to crime themselves. Additionally, having a criminal record decreases one’s
employment opportunities and lowers one’s earnings potential going forward.
This ensures that people convicted of drug crimes have fewer places to turn
besides crime upon their release. And by making the illegal drug trade so
lucrative, prohibition has only increased the temptation to engage in illicit
activities. Legalization would reverse both of these incentives. Firstly, it
would reduce the appeal of crime by removing the underground marijuana trade as
a profitable option. And secondly, it would reduce the necessity of crime by
decreasing incarceration and increasing the legal employment opportunities of
would-be convicts.

Finally,
the most compelling benefit of legalization is that it asserts our fundamental human
freedom to do as we so choose. For patients with debilitating diseases, that
freedom would finally grant them access to the painkilling and nausea reducing
medicine they need. For millions of black Americans, that freedom would mean
they are no longer discriminated against by an abusive drug war that targets their
neighborhoods and ignores their civil rights. And for hundreds of thousands of
prospective inmates, that freedom would be realized in the most literal sense
imaginable: they would be free from prison. Legalization would reaffirm the individual
liberties of all Americans, and remove the threat of arrest or worse for our
personal lifestyle decisions. Deciding to smoke a joint is every bit as much of
a personal choice as deciding to drink a beer or to eat a greasy hamburger. On
such matters, it’s not the governments place to protect us from ourselves. Free
people should be allowed to do whatever they please to the extent that it
doesn’t harm others, and private marijuana consumption in the comfort of one’s
own home simply does not do that.

Marijuana
certainly isn’t nearly as harmful or addictive as legal drugs like alcohol or
tobacco. But as a recent editorial in The Seattle Times put it, the relevant question
isn’t whether marijuana is good: “It is whether prohibition is good. It is
whether the people who use marijuana shall be subject to arrest, and whether
the people who supply them shall be sent to prison. The question is whether the
war on marijuana is worth what it costs.” The answer is a clear no. No one
knows exactly how the showdown between state and federal law will play out over
the coming months. But in any case, prohibition is far too costly, dangerous
and oppressive to last much longer.

2 comments:

"... that freedom would be realized in the most literal sense imaginable: they would be free from prison." People wouldn't actually be freed from prison, but future "violations" would be avoided. I'm sure there would be some way for any inmate who had the financial means to hire a lawyer and appeal their past conviction by using the new law as justice. I actually don't know what the precedent for that is, but I am pretty sure you stay in prison as long as your conviction was of a crime that was illegal when you did it...unfortunately.

You're correct that legislation which legalized marijuana probably wouldn't retroactively free existing pot prisoners (although theoretically there's no reason it couldn't). My quote didn't say it would; the part you cut off with the "..." said this would only be true for PROSPECTIVE prisoners. As in, people who otherwise would have been sent to jail in the future under existing policy would be preemptively prevented from going there, and therefore freed from the pending possibility of imprisonment. Now, with that said, the executive branch does have the power to expunge a criminal record. So if a president or even a state governor were sympathetic to the cause, they could also pardon all non-violent drug offenders if they so chose, and thus literally free them from prison in the present tense.